The beautiful thing about a course is that you get about as much out of them as you put into them. If you want to do one course launch, make a few thousand bucks and walk away, you can do that. If you want to create multiple courses around a general topic and run an academy that you advertise through webinars, podcasts, blogs, and joint-ventures and build a lifestyle business from your home, you can do that too!
Get paid to search the Web. Sites like Swagbucks.com and Zoombucks.com will pay you to use their online interface to search the web. To qualify, you need to be willing to download their search bar and use it for everyday Internet use. The only caveat that comes with this “gig” is that you might be paid in gift cards instead of cash. If you can parlay those gift cards into items you need to buy anyway – like groceries or gas – searching online can be a lucrative way to spend your free time.
You can sell your ebooks through Amazon's Kindle program or Apple's iTunes Connect, which gives you access to a large majority of the digital-book reading market and the barriers for entry are incredibly low. You don't need to invest lots of money to make this happen, but you do need to invest lots of time, not only in writing the ebooks, but in marketing them as well.
Flipping and selling websites, or website brokerage, works better based on experience. While one of the biggest benefits to flipping websites is the high ceiling for profit, you need to know what you’re doing. Making money from flipping websites requires a specific skill set and set of traits to be successful. There are a ton of talented people that are doing very, very well with this online business model.
Sell baked goods. Working parents might not have the time to whip up a birthday cake or cupcakes for school parties. That’s where you come in if you can create tasty baked goods. A friend of mine who is a single mom started making cupcakes as a way to keep herself occupied while staying with her dad when he was undergoing chemotherapy. She posted a picture of her cupcakes on Facebook and instantly received several orders from friends. Now she makes about $200 a month making cupcakes for others who hear about her through word of mouth or see pictures of her cupcakes on her Facebook page.
More and more companies and startups especially are embracing remote work—where you use online collaboration and communication tools to do your work from wherever you want. And you don’t have to be a 20-something hotshot designer or coder to reap the benefits of working remotely. Many remote positions are for customer support positions or other customer-facing positions that don’t require specialized skill sets.
Get samples. When you first start out as a freelance writer, it can be hard to get work without any published samples. However, it is possible to get quality samples if you are willing to do some writing for free. First, you can publish content on your own blog or website. Also, you can write guest posts for someone else’s blog. Finally, you can write blog posts for free in exchange for a byline.[20]
Start analyzing your decisions from the perspective of a firm. In economics, a firm's goal is simply to maximize profit. Well-run firms spend money only if they can expect to make more money from their investment, and they allocate their resources to the most profitable use. You're not a firm, of course, and you have other considerations, but if you make the majority of your time and money decisions by choosing the options that promise the highest return on investment, you'll likely earn more money, and that's good news for your shareholders (you and your family).
Jared Lewis is a professor of history, philosophy and the humanities. He has taught various courses in these fields since 2001. A former licensed financial adviser, he now works as a writer and has published numerous articles on education and business. He holds a bachelor's degree in history, a master's degree in theology and has completed doctoral work in American history.
I got this book today and read it all the way through. It turns out that it just didn't have the information I was looking for. As soon as I read something like, "How to be financially free in five years using none of your own cash or credit" - I immediately shut down. The book reads like those "house flipping" infomercials on television. I was looking for solid information on how to buy a small apartment building conventionally, things to watch out for, how to calculate operating expenses, etc. This book suggests that you buy real estate using OPM (other people's money) and run the property with a management firm.
Copywriting. Bloggers and business owners are out there looking for freelance writers to help them with their internet marketing campaigns. If you can write a good video marketing script, sales copy, press release, product reviews, website content and advertising copy, you can make money doing exactly that. You may need basic SEO skills since most of these copywriting jobs require some knowledge on how search engines work. These people are looking for traffic, and they will only hire you if you can deliver that.
They say that a penny saved is a penny earned. Actually, when you consider that you pay taxes on every penny you earn, you really do make more money by saving than by increasing your income, especially if the extra income will increase your tax rate dramatically. For example, let's say you have a choice between saving $100 or earning an extra $100. If you pay 15% taxes, then when you earn an $100, you only get $85. But when you save $100 off of your existing budget, you keep it all. To sweeten the deal further, if you take advantage of compound interest as found in most savings accounts, over time you'll start making money on the amount saved plus previous interest paid on that amount saved. It'll be pennies at first, but eventually the amount will multiply exponentially.

What a huge, great list of ideas – bookmarked this as I know I’ll be coming back to go over it again and again. Here’s another item that could have made the list. I found a financial directory that’s useful for info on making money online. It’s http://money.madbeetech.com. What I like about it is that each directory listing includes ebooks and videos that can be instantly downloaded. All sorts of stuff for people who have their own website, and people who don’t (but still want to make money online).

If you’re looking for inspiration, my friend Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of the website Making Sense of Sense has become the expert on all things affiliate marketing. Michelle earns more than $100,000 per month from her blog and the bulk of her income comes from affiliate sales. Michelle has had so much success with affiliate marketing that she even has her own course called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.